Google's Android mobile OS has continued to widen its lead on Apple's iOS in terms of U.S. smartphone subscribers, while Research in Motion and Microsoft have fallen even further behind, according to a new survey.

comScore's MobiLens report found Google Android to be the top smartphone platform with 38.1 percent market share in the U.S. during the period from March to May. The platform's 5.1 percent gain outpaced Apple's 1.4 percent increase to 26.6 percent.

The gains posted by Android and iOS were taken from BlackBerry maker RIM and Microsoft, which lost 4.2 percent and 1.9 percent market share, respectively. RIM's share of subscribers stands at 24.7 percent after the drop, while Microsoft held onto a 5.8 percent share. Palm fell slightly from 2.8 percent in February to 2.4 percent in May.

According to the survey, Apple maintained its lead over RIM after having passed its rival in terms of active U.S. users last month. Quarterly sales of the iPhone surpassed BlackBerry smartphones last October, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs remarking, "I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future." RIM recently formed a committee to review its corporate structure after the company's struggles prompted investors to call for an ouster of its co-CEOs.

Source: comScore

In terms of handset share market share, Apple continued to gain on third-placed Motorola, though the iPhone maker still has a long way to go to catch its rival. Apple gained 1.2 percent to reach 8.7 percent of mobile subscribers in the States. Meanwhile, Samsung, LG and Motorola held onto the top three spots with respective shares of 24.8 percent, 21.1 percent and 15.1 percent.

Source: comScore

Also of note, the survey saw gains in the number of subscribers who reported using their mobile phones to play games, download apps, and use a browser. Subscribers who play games on their phones jumped from 24.6 percent in February to 26.9 percent in May, while 38.6 of respondents said they download apps on their phones, up from 36.6 percent. Finally, the share of subscribers who use a browser on their mobile phones increased by 1.5 percent to reach 39.8 percent.

Android saw the first blip in a two-year growth rampage last quarter when it experienced its first sequential loss of market share in a region since it began its rapid ascension in 2009. Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf predicted last month that Android would resume its growth pace in the June and September quarters before experiencing a "material decline" in the December quarter after the release of the iPhone 5.

I read a conflicting survey only a few days ago. There needs to be an article disclaimer like with rumors cause if you took all of the surveys and stats at face value to each other then they are all worthless.

I realize this is only for Smartphones but nothing of meaning can really be derived by this as

a. Many people are waiting for the next iPhone, including myself, to upgrade
b. Not including iPads and iPod Touch into the equation means Android vs iOS data cannot compared.

I'd say the iPhone 4 is doing well considering it's a year old almost.

I'm with you on this. I intentionally skip models of Apple products, and even more so due to the two year contract I had when I got the 3GS. I intentionally skipped the 4, and am awaiting the 5. My credit card will drop the moment I'm able to get the 5. I think there are a lot of people waiting for the 5. We'll see how their numbers look after it's introduced.

1) Based on the rate of the growth of the smartphone market MS looks like it's selling quite a few more handsets. Still, a loss in marketshare does look bad.

It's not clear, it depends on the methodology for the first number. I think it may be a survey of platforms by current phones in circulation and use. ie. Just because MS has 6% of the smartphones in use doesn't mean that they're selling 6% of phones now.

The wording was clearer on the NIelsen survey which almost exactly matched the numbers for Apple & Android with this graphic from an earlier article

I made a comment about this in another thread, and with that guy's comment (which is now deleted ), I'll repeat because I think he proves my point: Android users have an unnatural obsession with technical specifications. When I bought my iPhone, I wasn't buying it for the hardware, I was buying it for the software. Android users are the exact opposite. They always buy based on hardware, even with the emergence of OEM UI skins now becoming a point of differentiation for devices.

I pay a premium (if you can even call it that, for me it's value added services - thus fair value) for things such as the App Store, the entire iOS ecosystem, the "user experience" first emphasis of iOS software design, and a mobile operating system that can operate smoothly and lag free with an 800 mhz processor instead of a battery burning 1.2ghz.

But then again when you look at the amount of revenue paid apps generate on Android, I can see why Android users have a hard time justifying paying a "premium" for an iOS device: they're generally pretty... thrifty.

I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.

the columns for apple are wrong.
feb/2011 should be 26.6%
may/2011 should be 28.2%
and the increase is 1.6%, not 1.4%

Actually NO.... If you look at the source (comScore) it should be

Feb/2011 = 25.2%
May/2011 = 26.6%

Regardless, looking at any of this in a vacuum is going to be misleading...

Hardwarre:
Apple has never built more than two phones for sale at the same time and is claiming 8.7% of the entire phone market... that's freaking mindblowing... note this is the phone market, not the smartphone market.

Samsung/LG/Moto seem who seem to release a "new model" every 3 months in a dozen or more product lines cover an entire spectrum of hardware from prepaid disposables to smartphones.

Software:
iOS is in use by 26.6% of smartphone subscribers. So, with 2 phones they own a quarter of the smart phone market. Still pretty impressive in my book. Could they build 5 different phones, sure, but there profit margins would be dramatically reduced... and then quality would be reduced to compensate and they'd be in the same boat as Samsung/LG/Moto.

Google doesn't sell a product. If Apple gave away phones the way the android providers and RIMM do and could keep up with demand, then Android would be dead in the water. I would venture that Apple's 27% share generates 2X the profit to Apple than than the totality of profits of the multiple Android vendors. I don't think the Android vendors are absorbing the full amount of rebates and discounts.

I couldn't have said it any better.
I also skipped iPhone 4 and 3G. Worth to mention the point somebody made earlier, only Apple make real money on this and equally important their users are happy to pay for the privileges and not because it's trendy or pretty (although both are true as well).

Android is cornering the market, iOS is still growing slowly and standing strong, RIM is bleeding market share faster than a kosher animal after slaughter, and still no one cares about WP7. Is ANYONE surprised by ANY of this?

1) Based on the rate of the growth of the smartphone market MS looks like it's selling quite a few more handsets. Still, a loss in marketshare does look bad.

The other question is how many of these are WP7 and how many are still the old WM6.5?

Windows Phone 7 is not backwards compatible so there are a lot of business users stuck on the old OS and still buying old phones until the software they currently use is rewritten for WP7 (or a different OS).

I made a comment about this in another thread, and with that guy's comment (which is now deleted ), I'll repeat because I think he proves my point: Android users have an unnatural obsession with technical specifications. When I bought my iPhone, I wasn't buying it for the hardware, I was buying it for the software. Android users are the exact opposite. They always buy based on hardware, even with the emergence of OEM UI skins now becoming a point of differentiation for devices.

I don't think that is true for the average Android user anymore. The early adopters were obsessed with technical specs and tech websites today remain obsessed; but smart phones have gone mainstream. I can't remember if smartphones are now 50% of all new phone sales but if it isn't it is certainly getting close. Smartphones (iOS, Android, or RIM) are now bought by normal people who have no idea what "rooting" or any of the other technical jargon. For most people the most important question is does it have Facebook?

I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.

certainly not the iPhone 4. it's so delicate! but beautiful. they really need to do away with the glass back. how many cracked and shattered iPhone 4's do we need?

Android is cornering the market, iOS is still growing slowly and standing strong, RIM is bleeding market share faster than a kosher animal after slaughter, and still no one cares about WP7. Is ANYONE surprised by ANY of this?

i care! look..it's still in its infancy but i think it's a cool start. i like the live tiles and the metro ui. but it certainly doesn't have nearly all of the features that android and iOS have. it would be good to have 3 dominant mobile os's to keep everyone on their toes and keep the innovation coming. competition is great in the technology sector.

With only two versions of the iPhone and dozens of Android phones of course Android is going to sell more. In the end Apple probably still makes more money due to the hardware of the iPhone being sold too. In addition what percentage of Android phones are up to par with the iPhone 1/4? 1/2? at most?

In addition what percentage of Android phones are up to par with the iPhone 1/4? 1/2? at most?

The other way of looking at this is Apple is missing a low end model to compete with these low end Androids.

Outside of the US, BlackBerry is growing fast because people want a phone for messaging. Blackberry Messenger is included in the BlackBerry Services and therefore doesn't use your data plan. An iPhone+data plan is simply too expense for many people especially teens. Apple needs a cheap version of the iPhone with iMessenger included for free that doesn't require an expensive data plan to compete for these users.

Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other. Competition is good for the consumer so both sides win in my opinion. In fact Apple themselves welcomed the competition from day one, openly. So why even bother trying to determine which is the better platform? If we truly succeed in accomplishing this and shutting out either OS, we will only be hurting ourselves.

As a regular reader of the usual Apple sites (being an Apple fanboy myself), one regularly gets to read gleeful stories about how "RIM CEOs didn't see X coming", "Ballmer didn't see Y coming", etc., and then some triumphalist account of the victory of the iPod, iPad, etc. I think it is time someone wrote an honest article about how Jobs didn't see the success of Android coming: the OS went from 0 to market leader in 2 years in the smartphone market... Here is a competitor who, with a much inferior, but cheaper and universally licensed OS, is overtaking Apple in leaps and bounds. Anyone been around in the 90s, sound familiar? I keep hearing the argument that "market share is for vanity, profits are what really counts, smartphone OS is not the same as desktop OS, etc. etc.", and I'm not convinced. What almost killed Apple in the 90s was that they dramatically lost market share, and I'm not sure that the same won't happen again, in the long run, in the phone market. We're still in the equivalent of the 80s, here, when the Macintosh just came out, and it looked like Apple would rule the world until kingdom come. But they're repeating the same mistakes again.

Worthless baseless information. Surveys are tools to create FUD and manipulate market values. Results will favour the party who paid for it.

Actual sales figures are the are the only ones which are of any interest.

I think you may be mistaken about a basic feature of the research market. The ComScore survey, like the Nielsen survey, isn't anything like a Gartner report. It's not being paid for by a single party and then distributed for free as a form of advertorial - it's paid for by subscription by those firms who want insight into the market. What we get access to is the free press release slice off the top, there's more data below that.

This report probably has some genuine flaws related to normalization of sample, but it won't have an a priori bias from being sponsored by one of the subjects.

Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other.

It should be evident that the two can't be directly compared if you're looking for a single smartphone sales champ. If there were only one Android OS phone and one Blackberry and one WM7, then go for it. Or if there were 25+ models running licensed iOS versions. But there isn't. Of course if there's only one phone available from Apple it would be expected to outsell (for the foreseeable future) any other specific single phone running any of the other OS's.

What I would like to see are numbers giving sales figures. I mean sales, not "sales" as in free with contract, or buy one get one. How many handsets were actually exchanged for cash in addition to a contract? The reason I ask is because two of my friends use Android smartphones ONLY because they came "free" with the contract.

Android is capturing so much of the market with handsets and little of app sales because most Android users don't want to pay for anything they don't have to. Neither of my friends leave on their 3G service because they chose the lowest data plan. They don't buy any apps either.

I can't see that the Android "giveaway" can be sustained. I'm probably wrong though.